Tor Garnett: resilience is a muscle you have to build up

This week, the School for Change Agents focuses on 'resilience' and I'll be sharing some blog posts which highlight different approaches to the topic...

I was at the dentist last week, when I opened the latest edition of Bazaar Magazine to find the wonderful Tor Garnett sharing an anecdote on 'resilience'. Tor is an inspiring woman - a Detective Superintendent in the Met Police with a deep interest in designing innovative, ambitious solutions to public service challenges.

As part of a Bazaar speakers panel, Tor was asked about the importance of developing resistance. She shared this extraordinary story:

"I was on my second shift as a duty officer in east London when there was a hospital bomb threat. I had two choices: to evacuate, risking the lives of everyone on life support, or to hold my nerve and treat it like a hoax. In those situations, you can't burst into tears. You have to get a grip so that you are confident in your decisions. In the end, we searched post boxes and deployed sniffer dogs to keep the hospital running, but I had a horrendous few hours wondering if I'd put 5,000 people in danger. Resilience is a muscle you have to build up, but it's importantly to process your emotions afterwards, even if that means having a weep in the bath at the end of the day."

Tor's comments put me in mind of a Forbes piece I read recently on "resilience as a muscle". It argues for better understanding the link between resilience and mindset, and 'training' ourselves to become more resilient in the way we might train our physical bodies.

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What is resilience?
To me, resilience is the ability to bounce back from a challenging event or overcome a series of obstacles that have gotten in the way of an individual achieving their goals.